Environmental Audit Committee
Oral evidence: Prospects for UNFCCC COP31, HC 745
Monday 26 October 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 26 October 2026.
Environmental Audit Committee members present: Mr Toby Perkins (Chair); Barry Gardiner; Sarah Gibson; Sojan Joseph; Dr Roz Savage; John Whitby.
Energy Security and Net Zero Committee member present: Bill Esterson.
Questions 43-66
Witnesses
III: Rachel Kyte CMG, UK Special Representative for Climate.
Examination of witness
Q43 Chair: Welcome back to the third of our three panels today looking at COP31. We are delighted to be joined by Rachel Kyte CMG, the UK Special Representative for Climate. Welcome, Rachel.
In our first session, the Turkish Ambassador and the Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom gave us their sense of the key perspectives and priorities for COP31. What is your sense of where the pre-conference negotiations have got to, and what do you feel about the strength of the global position heading into this important conference?
Rachel Kyte: I thank the Committee; I am pleased to be here. As other speakers have undoubtedly underlined, this COP is halfway between the first stocktake and the second stocktake, which will take place in 2028. It is the midpoint or a check-in on how well everybody is doing, which means that the focus is on action and implementation. That is what the Turks have suggested as the theme of the first week—the Action Agenda.
At the same time, it is the first COP to take place since the UN scientists and scientific bodies declared that we are in overshoot, so it is realistic to expect discussions on how to translate this new dimension of our work into urgent action as a big motif throughout the two weeks.
Because of the unusual arrangement between Türkiye and Australia, the pre-COP was in the Pacific, which meant that there was a strong focus on what is important to the Pacific in the preparations for the COP. That meant that there was a strong focus on the need to reinforce the 1.5°C temperature goal as the right goal, notwithstanding the fact that we are in overshoot at the moment.
Questions of access to adaptation finance are also extremely important, because, for small economies, access to finance is as important as the quantum of that finance. It also put a focus on the ocean, which is important to Pacific island nations. It is long overdue. The role that the ocean plays in exacerbating or managing climate issues has not yet been properly fleshed out at a COP, so there are expectations around that.
Really, the focus is on what it means to step up our mitigation action, especially in resilience, particularly in the light of overshoot and the tragic events on the border between Nepal and China. There is a focus on what it means now that we have a fund for loss and damage, and that we have had the first country going to that fund and saying, “We have just experienced loss and damage on an extraordinary scale, and the system has to respond.”
Q44 Chair: How optimistic do you feel at this stage? Listening to your answer, I get a sense that on the one hand, the climate emergency is very much a now problem, with the extent to which global warming is here with us and the fact that we are starting to see many of the catastrophes that we might expect.
On the other hand, you also reflected, rightly, on the fact that there is a bit of a sense that this COP does not quite have the urgent agenda that we have felt in some other COPs. It was very clear what some of the other COPs were going to be about. You reflected on this one as an implementation COP in between two benchmarking COPs. We all know what it should be, but do you have a sense, in terms of where discussions are, that it is going to deliver in any way? Do you have any optimism?
Rachel Kyte: Yes, in that there is no doubt—in fact, there is a strong urging from a number of key countries—that we don’t turn our back on 1.5°C. That means that we have to focus on how to speed up the implementation of action that would mitigate emissions so that we come back to 1.5°C if we can’t get there in a straight line from here. It means that we have to focus on the implementation of what has already been agreed, which is to triple renewable energy, double energy efficiency and transition away from fossil fuels.
The question of how to implement that is focusing on electrification. That means that we have to have serious conversations about how to finance the energy infrastructure that countries need to absorb all the new renewable energy that we are able to build. That is financeable if you can evacuate the green electrons through grids, interconnectors and the things that need to be built in many, many countries.
It means that we should focus on short-lived climate pollutants—in particular, methane. This is speeding up global warming. We have already made a commitment to reducing methane emissions by 30% by 2030. That means focusing on the methane that is leaching from the gas infrastructure around the world, but also working on issues related to methane in waste management and in agriculture. We see a lot of political and diplomatic activity that is about people saying, “Okay, we have pledged to reduce methane, so how are we now going to speed up action on that?”
It means that the work on deforestation remains of critical importance. That is about the carbon sequestration sink that so many of us depend on. The good news on that is that the work on the TFFF continues. Today, the Netherlands indicated that it was going to come in as an investor.
This is really about the coalitions of the willing, the working, the doing—however we want to refer to them—that will get things done at a faster pace. There, the optimism comes from the fact that nobody is turning away.
There are some very difficult issues that we have to talk about as an international community. How are we going to provide funding for loss and damage at scale? How are we going to help build resilient societies now that the impacts of climate change are coming fast and furiously? How are we going to do that next year—during our presidency of the G20—when we expect to witness the worst impacts of a super-El Niño?
There are difficult conversations to be had about how we make co-operation work, but the optimism comes from what I see as countries wanting to roll up their sleeves and really work at this.
Q45 Chair: You say that no one is turning away, but it would be impossible to look at the stance of the United States, the world’s largest economy, over the last few years and describe them—well, you might not describe them as turning away, but they are very clearly not engaged to the extent that they once were and are not playing any kind of leading role. In fact, their President is agitating for other nations indeed to turn away. How much of a challenge does that pose? In that context, is it reasonable to say that no one is turning away?
Rachel Kyte: To clarify, when I said that no one is turning away, I meant parties to the Paris agreement. Of course, the United States have left.
Q46 Chair: They have already turned away, then, haven’t they?
Rachel Kyte: They have left; they have walked off the pitch. Where parties that are still under the Paris agreement and still in the convention are focused is on making sure that if there were a change of heart or a change of Administration in the United States, the United States would be able to enter back in easily if they so wished. This is very much top of mind for a number of key countries.
We can speculate as to the diplomatic advances of the United States to try to persuade others to leave but, at the moment, nobody else has left. I think that that is important and not to be underestimated. As I have said previously, 194 minus one is not zero; 194 minus one is 193. And 193 countries will gather in two weeks’ time and work hard.
Does everybody agree? On the theory of change, yes, basically. On who needs to do what to speed up the theory of change, probably not. That is what we will argue about. We are also working within the confines of how the convention and the Paris agreement work: yes, we do not have things to negotiate, but we do have things to hold ourselves accountable to in our implementation.
How do we hold ourselves accountable? We do so through the nationally determined contributions; more than 160 of those have been filed. However, how do we hold ourselves accountable for pledges that we have made in Glasgow, Sharm el-Sheikh and Dubai? That is a really important question of international governance, because more than just Governments have pledged to do things. We have to hold ourselves accountable for those pledges if that is the Action Agenda.
Q47 Chair: What would you summarise as the UK Government’s priorities for COP31?
Rachel Kyte: First of all, to be clear that multilateralism is the only way to get things done, even if it is slow and creaky at times. Secondly, to accelerate the energy transition. We welcome the Turkish priority of 35% electrification by 2035. A lot of our technical assistance and support to countries is to improve their energy infrastructure to reach that goal and that is important for us.
We have been leading, together with China, the EU, Brazil, Canada and others, including Barbados, an effort to speed up the reduction of emissions from short-lived climate pollutants, including methane. That will be important. We are also part of a group of countries that have decided to invest in the Tropical Forest Forever Facility; getting that to operationalisation will be important.
There are many other things. On finance, you will have noted the Foreign Secretary’s speech during the annual meeting of the World Bank and the IMF on how we will use our G20 summit to look at issues of debt, prearranged finance, financing for early warning and those kinds of things. Those are absolutely fundamental to a country’s ability to invest in its own resilience. We want to use the COP as an opportunity to showcase how our G20 will be able to push forward issues of access to adaptation finance and finance for resilience.
Q48 Chair: Can we expect a written ministerial statement outlining the Government’s priorities ahead of the COP?
Rachel Kyte: I am not sure, but I will take that away. I am sure that something is planned. Forgive me for not knowing.
Chair: If it is not planned, it would be very helpful if it could be.
Q49 Barry Gardiner: Rachel, thank you for all the work you have done for so long to push multilateralism. It is absolutely right that one of the key asks of the British Government should be that we maintain that.
You said that one of your priorities was forests. Could you update the Committee on how you see the operationalisation of the TFFF now that we have given the £400 million to it? There have been criticisms that because it is an investment fund, there is no causal link between the money going in and increased forests; it depends on whether the market goes up or down, but in any event the investor gets their cut of the money, although the forest may not get theirs. How do you see it operationalised and what will the UK be pushing to ensure comes out of it?
Rachel Kyte: As you have said, the idea is that, once capitalised and closed, the fund will invest in the markets. It will have a senior and a junior tranche. Those in the junior position will accept a lower rate of return and those in the senior tranche a higher one.
We are looking at crowding in finance from a number of different sovereigns, some of them developed countries, some middle-income countries and potentially some philanthropies and others. It is a blend of financing. The performance of the fund as it invests will then produce a return and that will flow to forest countries with 20% of the proceeds flowing directly to indigenous peoples and local communities.
The structuring of the fund is important because that will determine whether it works. I have no doubt about that once we get into the detail. The sole reason for investing in the fund is that we want to do something at scale for forests, so we are aligned as investors in that interest. We have been negotiating to make sure that we had a seat on the board of the fiduciary vehicle that sits behind the fund, which has been placed with the World Bank, and we have a seat on that board. The stage we are at now is making sure that we have a seat on the board of the fund itself, but at the moment we are still fundraising.
We have pledges from a number of countries, spread out over a number of different years. First, we must ensure that those pledges are good. Secondly, if it is a pledge over five or 10 years, we must calculate how much is actually accruing to the fund right now, which will affect how it is rated by ratings agencies and how it is understood in the market. We also must hire a CEO, a chief investment officer and things like that. All that governance is going on while we continue to fundraise.
We are optimistic that there are others now who will contribute. I think having the UK in was very important. We are a triple A; that sends an important signal. There are also a number of financial operators in the City of London—banks, insurers and others—who are very keen to come into the senior tranche once they know the exact nature of the junior tranche. It is a lot of hard work. It is innovative, which means that some people are sceptical. However, I think that if it works, it will provide a new model for investing in global public goods. That is the hope.
Obviously, the news from Brazil overnight is good and a reason to celebrate as well.
Chair: We should clarify for those watching who do not know that Rachel is referring to the Brazilian general election and the re-election of President Lula.
Q50 Barry Gardiner: For the fourth time.
Allied to what you have just said about the structure of the fund—thank you for that; it is really helpful to have that clarity—we have been waiting quite some time for the implementation of schedule 17 in our domestic legislation, with regard to deforestation regulations. Are we going to follow the rest of the EU and, as I would put it, get this right?
Rachel Kyte: My understanding is yes. I am not focused on the domestic elements of our forest policy, but as I understand it, we will do something compatible with what the EU is doing. Last week, I was at the World Coffee Innovation summit here in London, and the expectation of everybody in that domain is that what we do will be compatible.
Chair: I will come back to you, Barry; we will move to Roz Savage.
Q51 Dr Savage: You have already mentioned coalitions of the willing—the sub-groups that are rolling up their sleeves and cracking on with it, figuring out the how rather than the if on the transition. In that light, what are your reflections on the Santa Marta conference?
Rachel Kyte: Coalitions of the willing, working groups, whatever, are not new. They date back to well before Paris itself. In some cases, they allow countries to race ahead without waiting for unanimity or a form of working consensus to arrive, and in that case, they are very welcome. When they are a distraction from the fact that we need a working consensus, maybe less so.
The Santa Marta conference was important; I think there were 57 countries there. What was really important was the sentiment expressed by almost all of the 57 that being in the room with countries that just wanted to work on what is extremely complicated and difficult—without having to take a defensive posture because the entire notion is being challenged, or deal with some of the toxicity that has crept into COP negotiations in recent years—was a breath of fresh air, extremely constructive and very much needed.
In the case of the UK, following Santa Marta we invited a subset of countries. They are developing countries that are net exporters. As a group, we felt that the story of the UK’s own transition could help them the most.
We invited them to Wilton Park, and I was struck by the real need to have a safe space to discuss really complex issues of fiscal policy and transition management. I was struck by how that safe space is critically important and how the people who need to be in the room are often people that you do not necessarily see at a COP. They might not even arrive at a conference on transitioning away. For example, when talking about how the bond markets might react to a country whose exports are going to diminish quicker than was expected, you need the IMF and others in the room while you are having that conversation.
Santa Marta is very important. It sits outside of the negotiations of COP. It provides an alternative space where countries can really think through the dynamics of their own transitions. It is perfectly legitimate to have different spaces open for different parts of what is a very complex, multifaceted transition for almost all countries.
It was a good conference, and the second one is now planned for next July. At COP31 the baton will be passed from Colombia and the Netherlands to Ireland and Tuvalu.
Q52 Dr Savage: Please correct me if my information is out of date, but as far as I can tell one of the actions coming out of Santa Marta was to produce those transitioning away from fossil fuels road maps. But as far as I can tell, so far only Colombia has produced its road map, unless you can correct me. What can we learn from their road map and any others that have already been published? When might we be able to expect to see a UK road map?
Rachel Kyte: To update you, to the best of my knowledge the other countries that have followed, and are following, Colombia in publishing their road maps to date are France, Germany and the Netherlands. There are other countries preparing them.
We are in a discussion in Whitehall and with Ministers around how we represent the things that we already have in place, which would constitute a road map. That is because we already have the carbon budget and we already have a number of different documents that are produced under statute or are reviewed by Parliament.
We are looking at what we would do to produce a road map if we so determined. We have not made a decision on that yet, but other countries are pursuing road maps.
It is important for some countries, depending on what they already have in place. A number of developing countries have expressed in very clear terms that the last thing they want to do is produce another document. They would really like to work on the elements of transition, which might be really complicated, and have a conversation that goes beyond the preparation of a document and gets into, as I was saying, what is the preparation for a bond market turning on you, for example? Or what would be the way to manage a set of bad assets as the appetite for fossil fuels declines and you still have a national oil company sitting on your public balance sheet.
Countries really want to get into the nitty gritty of the transition. For some countries a road map will be useful, for some countries they are not so sure. For ourselves, we are looking into it.
Q53 Bill Esterson: Rachel, the last time we met, you described the NDC as being extremely ambitious. You also said that the fact it was so ambitious means that other countries have probably had higher commitments than might otherwise have been the case. Is there a danger in it being so ambitious? What would the damage be to the UK’s credibility if we did not meet our figures, and what would be the damage to the rest of the world if we did not meet our figures?
Rachel Kyte: It was ambitious but not reckless. Of course, it had to land within the parameters of the carbon budgets, and so those act as guardrails—both a floor and a ceiling. The carbon budget process gives a pathway, and then the political decision and the informed decision is where on that pathway we want to land. It was appropriately ambitious and appropriately achievable with effort. There is specific language in the Paris agreement: article 4.3 and other articles make clear that an NDC should represent—I forget the exact wording, but words to this effect—the best effort for an ambitious NDC. We are not supposed to produce NDCs that are business as usual, and we are not supposed to produce NDCs that are a small incremental improvement on what was there before; we are supposed to produce NDCs that are appropriately ambitious to reach the goals of the Paris agreement. In the case of the UK’s NDC published in autumn 2024, we respected the letter and the spirit of the Paris agreement.
Q54 Bill Esterson: You have said that it is not reckless, yet according to the Climate Change Committee, the carbon budget and growth delivery plan is falling short on the 2030 figure, let alone the later ones. How worried should we be about where we are in meeting our NDCs?
Rachel Kyte: The first thing to note is that, in a transition, it is not a straight line. You can undulate, and the beauty of the Climate Change Act, the Climate Change Committee’s work and the budgets is that you can undulate within that pathway. Of course, circumstances change in the global energy markets and in global growth projections for the global economy and for individual economies, so it has to be realised within that fluid and constantly changing environment. We should be concerned that we take this seriously and that Parliament takes that seriously. This is not a commitment that is not substantive or substantial; it guides the economic decision making. I do not think that we are in danger territory at the moment, but it needs to guide our decision making, for sure.
Q55 Bill Esterson: You must be worried about the potential for the heat pump subsidies to be cut and the relaxation—some reports say quite significant relaxation—of the ZEV mandate, which would make meeting climate targets so much more difficult. Are you worried? What are you doing to make the case in Government?
Rachel Kyte: My role is externally facing, and I am an international special representative on climate. I am, by mandate, not supposed to involve myself—there are plenty of other experts and technical advisers working on those kinds of things. My job is to bring back to the Government what the rest of the world is doing and not doing and how we can help, and to sell to the rest of the world the UK’s seriousness and exactly how we can help them. I am on the road—
Q56 Bill Esterson: Sorry to interrupt, but the UK’s seriousness must be undermined if we are making the sorts of changes that have been suggested. That must worry you. It must be within your remit, from what you have just said, to try to do something about it.
Rachel Kyte: Well, you are asking me to speculate about decisions that have not been made yet. I do not speculate regarding other countries. What other countries are asking for is our best advice, based on what has worked and what has not worked, on how to build out the energy infrastructure for their own move towards clean energy.
They are also asking how more of the UK’s savings, assets under management and owned assets can be invested in their green energy transition—so how much more of our private capital can be induced into investing in their energy transition.
Other questions that I get are about the lessons to be learned from getting affordability right as you move through an energy transition. That is something that a number of countries are struggling with at the moment, across the European Union, Oceania and East Asia.
Those are the conversations that I am having. Yes, the rest of the world is reading British newspapers and watching how we navigate our transition, but, so far, the conversation is about the fact that the UK is further along in its energy transition than many other countries, and many other countries think that there are still things to learn from us.
Q57 Bill Esterson: Does the decision to go ahead with Jackdaw and increase gas production harm our international reputation, or is it recognised as a pragmatic measure?
Rachel Kyte: I do not think that Jackdaw harms our international reputation, in that the statements made by the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero were clear that this could be managed within our commitment to net zero. I think that, in this case, other countries know how we are managing it and understand the energy security struggles that we and everybody else are facing at the moment. So I do not think that Jackdaw damages our reputation.
Q58 Bill Esterson: You know what I am going to say next. What about Rosebank?
Rachel Kyte: You are asking me to speculate. Sorry. But nice try.
Bill Esterson: Thank you, Chair.
Barry Gardiner: I think the phrase in article 4.3 is “highest possible ambition”.
Rachel Kyte: There you go; I knew you would know it.
Q59 Barry Gardiner: I want to probe around the area of the synergy between the COPs, and the whole coming together of the UN conventions—the Rio conventions. We have also had the Foreign Secretary talking about climate change and nature loss representing an urgent national security issue.
I want to focus on the fact that we have now gone from £9.6 billion in the climate fund, with a third of it ringfenced for nature, to £6 billion, with a quarter of it ringfenced for nature, over the next three years. That change in the ICF is going to have a direct impact on all the countries that you are engaging and negotiating with, because that is the international climate finance and we ain’t doing what we used to do. What has been the impact on our global standing as a result of that?
I will just say that I welcome the announcement that we still do have that ringfenced nature fund, even within the £6 billion; that was not originally guaranteed, so that is a positive move, but it is a positive move within a negative scenario.
Rachel Kyte: The £6 billion is over three years, not five. The £11.6 billion was over five years. That £6 billion is going to be complemented by £6.7 billion coming from non-ODA investments. That includes the resilience and sustainability trust under the IMF, UK Export Finance, BII and, I think, PIDG and other mechanisms. That gets you to £12.7 billion over three years. Then there is an expectation that, off the back of that, we will crowd in and mobilise private finance.
When you take all of that together, and the fact that, unfortunately, most other developed countries or OECD members that are under an obligation to provide climate finance have not indicated what their numbers will be for this next period—we have publicly announced that £6 billion and the £6.7 billion, and our intention to mobilise, whereas some other countries still have not done so. In that context, although people are alarmed at the overall erosion of overseas development assistance, the UK is not particularly singled out. The one decision we made that has perhaps caused the most angst was the reduction in funding to the Green Climate Fund. For that, we are critiqued—there is no getting around that.
Q60 Barry Gardiner: Speaking of the Green Climate Fund, I want to talk about what it has been doing with the capacity fund, which relates to what you spoke about with Roz around what came out of Santa Marta. The GCF has put in place a capacity fund, used particularly for the green grids initiative, which is a positive development, but we have also seen—this ties in with the CBD—subsidies for fossil fuels. As you will know, the IMF says there is $725 billion, which is 0.6% of global GDP, of explicit subsidy, and $6.7 trillion, which is 5.8% of global GDP, of implicit subsidy. Those figures are slightly out of date: the UNDP says that the first figure is now over $1 trillion.
To join up the CBD and the UNFCCC, the CBD is looking at target 18 of the global biodiversity framework to address $500 billion of perverse subsidies each year. When will we in the UK be robust in our assessment of the fossil fuel subsidies that we are giving? For a long time, the Government have said, “We don’t subsidise fossil fuels,” but that is not what the IEA or IMF say, nor is it what any competent observer would deduce.
Rachel Kyte: I am not in a position to tell you how His Majesty's Treasury wants to move forward on that question. There are two live discussions at the moment. One is about the repurposing of those subsidies and the fact that, for the G7 and the G20, the level of subsidy is higher now than it was a few years ago—where will the reversal come from? The second live conversation is about whether there is a way to focus on getting the polluter to pay more. This work is on whether a new generation of levies or fees that would flow, in particular, into funds to support resilience in developing countries could be organised.
These are informal dialogues and conversations, and they are outside the UNFCCC and the Paris agreement. They are referenced in documents undertaken by the Presidency. For example, they are referenced in the Baku to Belém road map for how to finance the $1.3 trillion, which the $300 billion is supposed to mobilise. These are live conversations, and our Treasury officials participate in them, either as observers or in the context of the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action, so we are engaged. But I cannot tell you what the pathway is to a reduction of subsidies across developed countries—it is not just the UK—at the moment.
Q61 Barry Gardiner: Turning to the national security assessment on global ecosystem collapse, when will we get a Government plan to respond to those threats, and how will we work with other countries to facilitate that? There has been a huge amount of interest from other countries in the fact that it was our Joint Intelligence Committee that produced this. We have now set up the security taskforce. How will we leverage that at COP?
Rachel Kyte: This was a cross-Whitehall strategic assessment, and the Government are now moving from assessment to action. There is a taskforce on the national security and resilience risks of a changing climate and nature loss. We have also launched a nature security research and development programme. The whole purpose of that is to strengthen international engagement and resilience planning, informed by the assessment.
The Foreign Secretary convened an informal conversation around these issues on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly. The work is going on now. I think the taskforce met again last week, and we have also contributed funding to the climate security mechanism of the United Nations.
We are moving from having an assessment to “What does implementing action on the basis of that assessment mean across Whitehall and for Government?” With the Foreign Secretary putting importance on this, a lot of other countries are interested in the strategic assessment and in how we are carrying it forward.
There will be informal events during COP. However, in the context of the Paris agreement and the UNFCCC, security is not the framing that many countries choose to look at these issues. They are cautious that we would securitise the issue of climate change. In the spirit of helping countries be more resilient, the focus at COP is very much going to be on particular fragile and conflict-affected states.
Q62 Barry Gardiner: That is an important point; each country’s own security is a very separate issue. How are we going to do this at the G20? Is it going to be incorporated in our G20 presidency as one of the key issues that we focus on?
Rachel Kyte: There was a special meeting of Ministers at the end of last week. I have not seen the exact read-out of that, but I believe the read-out will be coming out soon and will clarify what our priorities are for the moment. Again, the G20 is traditionally focused on economic security. The economic security issues related to climate are related to growing indebtedness, a decrease in overseas development assistance around the world, and higher interest rates for longer and what that is doing to the fiscal space that countries need to invest in their own resilience when they cannot invest because they are repaying their debt or are under a lot of pressure. The focus of our G20 presidency will be on resilience and security in the context of the working methods of the G20.
Q63 Barry Gardiner: You have taken us nicely through to resilience and adaptation, which is the next thing I wanted to ask you about. We are doubling up with Sierra Leone as leaders on adaptation, but you will know what Baroness Brown said about our own success, or lack of it, on adaptation. In her report for the Climate Change Committee’s sub-committee on adaptation, “A well-adapted UK”, she said “What governments have been doing on adaptation clearly isn’t working. It is time for change.” How will we leverage our role as the lead pair with Sierra Leone on adaptation?
Rachel Kyte: The invitation to pair and provide a diplomatic leadership role is not necessarily because any given country has figured it all out. The importance of the resilience and adaptation discussion at the COP is that no country has got this figured out. It is humbling and levelling: we are all in this together.
Therefore, the role that the Secretary of State will play as a pair is in facilitating countries coming from very different economic spaces and very different political approaches to reach a point of consensus or unanimity around how we are going to help everybody move forward on adaptation and resilience. The role of being a pair is to help everybody reach agreement. Countries will do what countries need to do, but countries are supposed to co-operate in order to help each other go faster.
In the case of adaptation, there is a lot to be learned from what we have supported through the work of the FCDO and DEFRA for many years, which is: how do we understand locally led adaptation? I think that is also a question domestically, in that decisions about which resources to protect within a community are decisions that communities want to make. They want to be engaged in those conversations themselves. That is true everywhere, so how do we do locally led adaptation while at the same time ensuring that the finance, the technology and the help can flow from the top down? How do the bottom-up and the top-down meet? Those are big conversations on adaptation and resilience at the moment.
Secondly, we are extremely vulnerable to extreme heat. That is not what people traditionally think of when they think of the UK, but the adaptation report was really clear on that. There are lessons for us to learn from a number of other countries and cities that are much further advanced in the way in which they protect themselves from extreme heat.
Thirdly, on floods and sea level rise, obviously we were involved in the diplomatic efforts around a resolution on sea level rise at the General Assembly in recent weeks. When it comes to flooding, there are again lots of lessons to be learned, but we have been pioneers in prearranged finance and in finding ways to make sure that countries have access to the resources they need if a storm is to hit or a flood is to happen. I think that a lot of the leadership that people look to the UK for is the Government’s leadership on the public sector side, but also the City of London’s leadership on the private finance side, around how to put in place a stack of finance for resilience at the country level.
Despite the fact that our Climate Change Committee found that our own adaptation work is not where it needs to be, no country has got this figured out, and people look to us for prowess in financial structuring and things like that. I think that is something that, again, you will see us pick up in our G20 presidency.
Q64 Barry Gardiner: The second global stocktake comes in 2028, but the IPCC adjourned last month without agreeing a timeline for the seventh assessment report. What are the implications of that if we do not get agreement before COP33? And are some countries deliberately politicising and frustrating the scientific process? What are your fears around that?
Rachel Kyte: The strength of the Paris agreement process is that it has been science-based and evidence-driven. To lose that would be to start to unravel the very heart of the process. We therefore feel very strongly, together with many other countries, that we cannot allow that to be interfered with.
It is really disappointing that we have not been able to reach agreement on the timelines for the work that we should base the second stocktake on. In particular, we need to have something in Working Group III, which refers to mitigation and so on. We need to base the second stocktake on the current scientific view of things.
The IPCC will meet again in a few months’ time. There is now furious diplomatic activity to try to see whether we can find a way, if not for a full airing of the science, then for something that would suffice for the preparation of the second global stocktake.
There are two camps of countries that could be characterised as resisting an agreement. One is a group of countries who feel that the workload involved in the assessment reports is too heavy for them and that they need more support. This is a number of African countries in particular, and there is legitimacy to their concerns, so we, the European Union and others are working to make sure those concerns are met.
Then there is a second group of countries who are science-based and evidence-driven, who respect science and in fact are leading countries when it comes to the science, but who I think it is appropriate to say are concerned that the stocktakes are becoming instrumentalised. They have a different view of the purpose of the stocktake. The stocktake is, as it says, to take stock. What do we do with the stocktake? They believe that NDCs are sacrosanct, that this is a bottom-up process and that each country produces a nationally determined contribution in the light of the stocktake and in light of its own pathway. They are concerned that we took the first stocktake and instrumentalised it into a series of actions that must be followed up. They felt that went too far, and that this was a top-down instruction as opposed to a nationally determined contribution.
Does that sound like semantics? Maybe, sitting here in London. In other capitals, it feels like changing the nature of the Paris agreement. I believe these countries are pushing back very hard on any ability of the second stocktake to reach into their domestic plans and tell them what to do, so we have to manage that diplomatically.
Q65 Barry Gardiner: I would have thought that you and I learned at Copenhagen that you don’t do top-down.
Rachel Kyte: No, and I don’t think that the first stocktake was top-down, but it was the way in which the negotiations played out, the way in which it was forced through and the way in which the shorthand that was developed as a result of it sat awkwardly and uncomfortably with a number of key countries who felt that they were jumped into something. Through the history of the UNFCCC, there have been moments at different COPs when different countries have felt that they have been pushed into something they did not feel comfortable with, and this is just the latest of those.
Q66 Barry Gardiner: Where does the UK sit in this debate?
Rachel Kyte: We are one of the few countries that talk to everybody, and I think we have an important role to play in making sure that different groups can hear each other. We also have in the Foreign Secretary somebody who is recognised globally as being of good faith on these issues and working hard for the Paris agreement. We have a full bench of experienced Ministers, some of whom will experience a COP for the first time, but all of whom are pragmatists. That is where we can talk to the EU and the Arab group. We have a good relationship with our Chinese counterparts. We have invested in our relationships with India and Brazil, and we spend time talking to the small island states and the least developed countries. Of course, next week we will engage with many of them again in the context of CHOGM. When we are good at our jobs, we are able to be a bridge builder.
Barry Gardiner: Thank you very much. Let’s hope we continue to be that honest broker. Thanks for all you do in that.
Rachel Kyte: It’s my pleasure.
Chair: That brings us to the close of this session. Thank you so much, Rachel, for sparing your time at this incredibly busy but seminal and important moment. We are very grateful once again for your contribution and look forward to hearing your post-match report when you get back. Thank you very much indeed.